Like my colleague The Moose, I was stunned by press accounts of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan’s testimony to the administration’s tax reform study commission yesterday. Back in 2001, you may recall, Greenspan endorsed Bush’s tax cuts on the bizarre theory that otherwise the national debt might disappear and the federal government would have to start buying equity in private businesses to dispose of excess cash. More recently he has returned to his pre-Clinton administration doomsaying about federal budget deficits. So what does he propose now? Draining more revenues from Washington by creating big, fat tax-free savings vehicles to enable high earners to shelter investment income from taxation.To be sure, what Greenspan actually wants is a national consumption tax, and endorses tax-free savings vehicles as a back-door means to that goal. This approach, of course, is a big part of the Grover Norquist “starve the beast” strategy of deliberately engineering large budget deficits in order to force big cutbacks in federal spending, or a shift in the tax base towards wage income or consumption, or all of the above.And the convergence of the Norquist and Greenspan approaches represents a stunning demonstration of how politics has completely debased a large part of the U.S. libertarian tradition.In Grover’s case, the big deal with the devil was his acceptance of the idea that repealing any sleazy corporate tax break represented a verbotin “tax increase.” Thus, instead of championing a level playing field for business competition and for tax policy, Norquist is now the tribune for corporate favoritism and reverse-Robin-Hood fiscal strategies, which help finance and politically drive an agenda that is “libertarian” only to the extent that it screws up government in a way that might eventually cause its general demise.Greenspan’s own Faustian Bargain stems from his famous “pragmatism”–barred by the limited role of the Fed, and by political realities, from actively promoting the free-market paradise he has long espoused, he consistently reaches out to endorse “politically feasible” policies that indirectly achieve his ends–typically, the free candy of tax cuts and tax breaks.Thus, both men embrace a stealth libertarianism that isn’t libertarian at all in its means. We all know Grover’s many ideological and rhetorical vices, but for all his legendary power and influence, he’s essentially just another Washington jive-ass thriving at the intersection of money and politics. But it’s beginning to become more apparent every day that the oracular Chairman has an equally twisted agenda.The Moose’s post today linked to an AEI article by Bill Bradford aboutGreenspan’s much-reported but oft-forgotten association with the Objectivist cult of novelist and proto-libertarian Ayn Rand. I thought I knew the story pretty well, but two things really startled me in Bradford’s piece: (1) Greenspan went straight from Rand’s inner circle (ironically but accurately known as “The Collective”) into the 1968 presidential campaign of Richard Nixon. In fact, Greenspan was already knee-deep in conventional Republican politics when he signed onto Rand’s bizarre excommunication of her protege and former lover Nathaniel Brandon. (2) When asked during various Senate confirmation hearings over the years if he still adhered to Randian dogmas like abolition of all regulations and a return to the gold standard, Greenspan gave no sign of a change of heart or mind.Given Greenspan’s current status as a close ally of George W. Bush, you kinda wish someone had recently asked him if he still regards belief in God as a deadly “mysticism of the mind” (corresponding to socialism, the “mysticism of the muscle”), a key tenet of the Objectivist canon. But whatever his political prudence and well-rehearsed routine as a mere economic technocrat, it is becoming clear that his formative extremism has not gone away–just the candor with which his mentor always expressed her oppressively dogmatic views about ends and about means.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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September 20: Tim Scott Wants to Fire Strikers Like Reagan Did
Reading through the ambiguous to vaguely positive remarks made by Republican pols about the historic auto workers strike, one of them jumped off the page, and I wrote about it at New York:
One of the great anomalies of recent political history has been the disconnect between the Republican Party’s ancient legacy as the champion of corporate America and its current electoral base, which relies heavily on support from white working-class voters. The growing contradiction was first made a major topic of debate in the 2008 manifesto Grand New Party, in which youngish conservative intellectuals Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam argued that their party offered little in the way of material inducements (or even supportive rhetoric) to its emerging electoral base. Though Douthat and Salam were by no means fans of Donald Trump, the mogul’s stunningly successful 2016 campaign did follow their basic prescription of pursuing the economic and cultural instincts of white working-class voters at the expense of doctrinaire free-market and limited-government orthodoxy.
So it’s not surprising that Trump and an assortment of other Republicans have expressed varying degrees of sympathy for the unionized autoworkers who just launched a historic industry-wide strike for better wages and working conditions. But there was a conspicuous, even anachronistic exception among nationally prominent GOP politicians: South Carolina senator and presidential candidate Tim Scott. As NBC News reported:
“It’s the latest of several critical comments Scott has made about the autoworkers, even as other GOP presidential candidates steer clear of criticizing them amid a strike at three plants so far …
“’I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike. He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely.’”
Scott’s frank embrace of old-school union bashing wouldn’t have drawn much notice 40 or 50 years ago. And to be clear, other Republicans aren’t fans of the labor movement: For the most part, MAGA Republicans appeal to the working class via a mix of cultural conservatism, economic and foreign-policy nationalism, nativism, and producerism (i.e., pitting private-sector employers and employees against the financial sector, educational elites, and those dependent on public employment or assistance). One particularly rich lode of ostensibly pro-worker rhetoric has been to treat environmental activism as inimical to the economic growth and specific job opportunities wage earners need.
So unsurprisingly, Republican politicians who want to show some sympathy for the autoworkers have mostly focused on the alleged threat of climate-change regulations generally and electric vehicles specifically to the well-being of UAW members, as Politico reported:
“’This green agenda that is using taxpayer dollars to drive our automotive economy into electric vehicles is understandably causing great anxiety among UAW members,’ [Mike Pence] said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“Other Republicans followed suit, with a National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson calling out Michigan Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin — Democrats’ favored candidate for the state’s open Senate seat — for her Thursday vote allowing state-level limits or bans on gas-powered cars as choosing her ‘party over Michigan.'”
More strikingly, Trump, the 2024 presidential front-runner, is planning to hold an event with Michigan workers at the very moment his GOP rivals are holding their second debate next week, notes the Washington Post:
“While other Republican candidates participate in the Sept. 27 event in California, Trump instead plans to speak to more than 500 autoworkers, plumbers, electricians and pipe-fitters, the adviser said. The group is likely to include workers from the United Auto Workers union that is striking against the Big Three automakers in the country’s Rust Belt. The Trump adviser added that it is unclear whether the former president will visit the strike line.
“Trump’s campaign also created a radio ad, to run on sports- and rock-themed stations in Detroit and Toledo, meant to present him as being on the side of striking autoworkers, the adviser said.”
There’s no evidence Trump has any understanding of, much less sympathy with, the strikers’ actual demands. But in contrast to Scott’s remarks endorsing the dismissal of striking workers, it shows that at least some Republicans are willing (rhetorically, at least) to bite the hand that feeds in the pursuit of votes.
Meanwhile, the mainstream-media types who often treat Scott as some sort of sunny, optimistic, even bipartisan breath of fresh air should pay some attention to his attitude toward workers exercising long-established labor rights he apparently would love to discard. Yes, as a self-styled champion of using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private- and homeschooling at the expense of “government schools,” Scott is constantly attacking teachers unions, just like many Republicans who draw a sharp distinction between public-sector unions (BAD!) and private-sector unions (grudgingly acceptable). But autoworkers are firmly in the private sector. Maybe it’s a South Carolina thing: Scott’s presidential rival and past political ally Nikki Haley (another media favorite with an unmerited reputation as a moderate) famously told corporate investors to stay out of her state if they intended to tolerate unions in their workplaces. For that matter, the South Carolina Republican Party was for years pretty much a wholly owned subsidiary of violently anti-union textile barons. Some old habits die hard.
One of the useful by-products of the current wave of labor activism in this country is that Republicans may be forced to extend their alleged sympathy for workers into support for policies that actually help them and don’t simply reflect cheap reactionary demagoguery aimed at foreigners, immigrants, and people of color. But Scott has flunked the most basic test threshold compatibility with the rights and interests of the working class.